Team-Building Activities Your Coworkers Won’t Hate

Team-Building Activities Your Coworkers Won’t Hate

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1. Solve a Puzzle

This can be a literal puzzle, like a 500 piece set (if you’re down to spend a few dollars on Amazon), or a brain teaser that requires thinking and brainstorming out loud.  Toss one out to your team and, if you’re feeling overly ambitious, give them a time limit to complete the task. The key is that everyone has to contribute to the success of the project.

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1. Solve a Puzzle

Once they’re done or time runs out, take a moment to reflect on the experience. Ask your team: What was your strategy to solve it? Who did what? Why did you make the decisions you did? Allowing everyone to think through their process might highlight unique perspectives or strengths in each individual—or at least lead to an eye-opening conversation.

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2. Count to 20

This one’s super simple and great if you want to take a couple of minutes to bond. Have everyone sit in a circle. Anyone can start the count off or say a number at any time, the goal being to count from one to 20.  However, if two people jump in at the same time to say a number, the count starts over. This game requires team 

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2. Count to 20

members not only to be cognizant of the group dynamic, but to work together—with limited communication—to get to the end.

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3. Try a Compliment Circle

There are different variations you can take on this to encourage your team to express appreciation for one another.  One option is you can simply spend five minutes having individuals compliment one another, whatever pops into their mind (if you’re the manager, you should start to get the ball rolling!). This can

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3. Try a Compliment Circle

be as easy as saying, “I wanted to tell Gina I loved her proposal this week” or “Big shoutout to Danny for bringing in donuts last week when we were all heads-down to meet a big deadline.” Or you can go around and have each person address the coworker to their right, so that everyone gets a chance to shine.

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4. Host a Brainstorming Session

Team building can absolutely be work focused, and oftentimes that’s the best kind. The key is to make these brainstorming sessions less about day-to-day accomplishments and more about bigger team goals.  Maybe you want to outline your KPIs for the rest of the quarter. Maybe you want to hash out some new ideas for an 

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4. Host a Brainstorming Session

upcoming campaign. Maybe your team’s strategy feels stale and you’re looking for ways to refresh it. Whatever your goal, try organizing your conversation using one of these suggestions: An idea board: The simplest form of brainstorming. Give everyone an agenda ahead of time, and have them come to the meeting with three to five 

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4. Host a Brainstorming Session

ideas. Talk through them, and have people contribute additional thoughts, questions, or concerns. Fist to five: Have everyone brainstorm solutions to a problem, then go through them one by one by holding up a fist or a number of fingers up to five. A fist means you’re not on board and five fingers up means you think it’s a great 

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4. Host a Brainstorming Session

idea. Then, have everyone state their case as to why they chose the fingers they did. Went well, went OK, could have done better:  We use this process for quarterly retrospectives and project post-mortems. Have everyone jot down on Post-it notes things they thought went well, things they thought went OK, and things that didn’t go

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4. Host a Brainstorming Session

well or could have been done better, and sort the Post-its into their respective categories. Once all the ideas are on the table talk through them and come up with potential solutions to the problem areas.

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5. Have a “Show and Tell”

This can be a great way to get your team to brag a bit about their accomplishments, and to encourage them to stay updated on what everyone else is working on. One Friday of the month, our engineering team hosts an open meeting where anyone at the company  member is working on, and allow people to ask questions,

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5. Have a “Show and Tell”

 give suggestions, and offer up positive feedback.

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6. Share Your Personality

Have everyone on your team fill out a personality test (here are some of our favorites), then get together and discuss. What you decide to do with this is really up to you—the key is to have each employee understand their colleagues’ strengths, weaknesses, and ticks.  Maybe you group similar personalities together and have them chat about how their 

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6. Share Your Personality

traits come out in the workplace, or have them complete an assignment like designing their “ideal” office based on their personality type and sharing it with the group. Another option? Have everyone fill out this “user manual” and share their findings with the team.

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7. Play Team or Board Games

You don’t need me to tell you that board games bring people together (just read this article on the benefits of networking over games).  And there are some many great, office-friendly options out there! There’s Apples to Apples (a SFW version of Cards Against Humanity), Code Names, Pandemic, and Jenga—all games that require teamwork.

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7. Play Team or Board Games

There are also non-tabletop games like Celebrity or Heads Up (available on iOS and Android) that require nothing but a phone or a pen and paper. It may feel silly to pull out some games in the middle of the office, but you may be surprised to find that doing so loosens your team up and forces them to work together in different and creative ways.

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8. Create a Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunts can be great for new hires to get to know the landscape and their team—requiring them to identify things around the office and ask seasoned employees questions during their first week such as “When was [Company] started?” or “Who was our first client?” or “How many people work on the marketing team?” But they’re just as effective with veteran teams. Maybe you set

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8. Create a Scavenger Hunt

one up for employees to uncover X number of facts or artifacts by the end of the day together. Or divide the group into multiple teams and see who finishes first. However you choose to do it and whatever you choose for them to find, this will definitely encourage team members to work together on something far removed from their usual work and team of people.

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9. Untangle a “Human Knot”

This is a camp favorite, but also a fun way to have team members come together to solve a problem. Have everyone squish together in a circle and grab hands with people not directly next to them.  The goal, once everyone’s hands are interlocked, is to untangle yourselves without breaking the chain. You can make it even more challenging 

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9. Untangle a “Human Knot”

by not allowing people to talk or putting a time limit on it. It requires a bit of leg room to crawl over each other (not to mention an office culture where people feel comfortable holding hands—tread carefully with this one), but if you feel up to it it can make for a fun puzzle.

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10. Give Out Blind Directions

Pair team members up and have one put on a blindfold—it’s then the other person’s job to direct them in making moves as best they can, whether that’s getting them to the other side of the office or having them complete a task like moving an object or drawing a picture. Have individuals who normally don’t work as closely together do this exercise, and it’ll help them practice communication and build trust.

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